These Alberta sculptors were shortlisted to build a Stanley Cup monument

A few dozen miles West of Calgary in a workshop in Cochrane, the Begg family is busy memorializing Canadian history in bronze.

This month, after sculpting 85 monuments across Canada, husband-and-wife duo Don Begg and Shirley Stephens-Begg were short-listed in a competition to build a tribute to Canada’s holy grail: the Stanley Cup.

“We are just thrilled to pieces,” said Stephens-Begg, who hopes to design a sculpture with her husband and their partners at Exp, a landscape architecture firm, “to inspire everyone to hockey from little kids that are just learning to skate.”

But, with the sculpture competition about to kick into high gear, both husband and wife were mum on the details of their plan to inspire Canadians.

This Friday, along with seven other finalists selected from 40 entries, they will visit the site in central Ottawa, across from Confederation Square, where the tribute — called Lord Stanley’s Gift monument — will stand.

They will then have three-and-a-half months to submit a detailed proposal for the project, which will commemorate the moment in 1892 when Lord Stanley of Preston gave Canada the Stanley Cup.

The winners will have just over one year to construct the tribute, which is slated to be unveiled in December 2017 to mark the 150th anniversary of Canada’s Confederation and the 100th anniversary of the National Hockey League.

If the Beggs win, the Stanley Cup memorial would be the latest in a string of sculptures recalling various facets of Canadian history that the award-winning couple has built over their almost five decades-long careers. These include a sculpture of Lord Strathcona driving the last spike into the Canadian Pacific Railway outside the legislature in Edmonton and the trout fisherman at Calgary International Airport.

At 73, neither Stephens-Begg nor her husband, who is in his late sixties, have any plans of slowing down or retiring, even though they’ve been at it since 1973. The pair is in the midst of building a statue of a Ukrainian pioneer and an immigrant family, among other projects, in their studio, where they work on the same sculptures side-by-side.

“I feel like we’re creating history by making very, very accurate sculptures,” said Stephens-Begg, who, along with her husband, spends hour poring over photographs, interviewing historical experts, visiting museums and reading up on their subjects. They aim to portray people as they were, down to the details of their uniforms, to give viewers an eye into the past.

“I try to figure out how they would like to be portrayed to honour them,” said Begg.

They’ve taken a particular interest in female pioneers, building tributes to them across the Prairies, including in Saskatoon, Calgary and Cochrane.

“Many of them worked beyond their strength, and they’re being forgotten,” explained Stephens-Begg, after describing a Calgary statue that honours a group of nuns who established the Holy Cross Hospital in the 19th century. They did so after arriving on a train in the middle of winter with only about $70.

For Begg, one of the highlights is the people they’ve met along the way. The Queen attended the unveiling of a statue in Calgary. Former prime minister Stephen Harper came to attend a ceremony in Mayerthorpe for another.

But Begg also values the impact their sculptures, located in places as far apart as Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T to Nashville, Tenn., have on the public and will continue to have for generations to come.

“When you put (a sculpture) out in a park, it brings the best out of everybody,” he said.

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.